The Spending Habits of India’s Super Rich Revealed
- India continued to mint multi-millionaires last year and its super rich were on a spending spree, the report said.
The number of Indians worth of 250 million rupees ($4.2 million) or more rose 16% to 117,000 in the year ended March 31, the report said. That figure is up from 62,000 in fiscal 2011.
Last year more than 150 rich Indians Kotak interviewed on average increased their spending—as opposed to saving and investment—to 49% of their income, compared with 30% the year before.
“India’s super rich are moving out of their comfort zones to put more (money) in the rare and the risky – exotic food, private equity and even space travel,” said C. Jayaram, joint managing director of Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd.
The Kotak survey tried to delve into the spending habits of this elite group of multimillionaires and found out that on average they seem to spend like the rest of us.
Like most people in India, the rich used the largest percentage of their discretionary spending on jewelry, clothes and holidays. It isn’t until the bottom of their rankings of what they spent on that you find more rarefied items: art, wine and luxury watches.
When it comes to food, surprisingly—or maybe not — Indian food comes in third after Chinese and Italian. It’s not quite clear where they are eating good Lebanese, Mexican and Japanese food though, which are all hard to find in India.
The survey suggest you are more likely to find Indian millionaires at the mall than in the mountains. Shopping was picked as a reason for travel by the most millionaires—probably because there aren’t enough nice shops in India for them to spend all their money. Beach holidays and hill stations were next in line. A few things that differentiate this group of super consumers from regular Indians: they go on safaris and can ski and when they travel it’s usually in the business or first-class sections of the airplane.
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